I've been using the Apple Mail app as my default mail client on my phone and laptop, and it's time I share some of the handy tricks I've learnt along the way.

Starting with:

1. Open links in the background

You can open links from emails in your default browser without disrupting your flow by right-clicking on a link and choosing Open Link Behind Mail:

This is handy while reading multiple emails at a stretch or while opening links from a newsletter like this one.

2. Have a reply-later queue

The Mail app allows flagging emails with coloured flags to help locate them later for processing.

I use this feature to set up a reply-later queue to set aside some emails for replying when I have the time.

Once you've flagged an email with a colour of your choice, open the Mailboxes sidebar with ⌘ + ⌃ + S, expand the Flagged section and right-click on a flag to rename it to something meaningful:

3. Have easy access to your labels

I have two labels in my inbox that auto-sort new emails using Gmail filtering rules to keep my inbox clean: Newsletters and Papertrail.

On the Mail app, I can easily access emails tagged with these labels from the Favourites bar:

If you use labels to tag incoming emails, add your frequently used ones to Favourites in the Mailboxes sidebar by right-clicking a label and choosing Add to Favourites:

If you don't see the Favourites bar on your Mail app, you can toggle it from View → Show Favourites Bar to show it.

That concludes the list, but if you have an additional tip or a workflow that helps you every day, I'd love to know. Hit reply to this email and let me know.

Now, let's move on to the rest of this newsletter issue: